IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/empeco/v65y2023i6d10.1007_s00181-023-02434-6.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Decomposing income inequality in the United States: 1968–2018

Author

Listed:
  • Zhaochen He

    (Christopher Newport University)

  • Yixiao Jiang

    (Christopher Newport University)

Abstract

To understand rising income inequality in the United States, we use data from the March Current Population Survey (CPS) to decompose income inequality into components attributable to five personal traits: sex, race, education, occupation, and industry of work. By quantifying how income differences across these traits contribute to total inequality, and how those contributions have changed over time, we vet competing hypotheses for the rising gap. In performing this analysis, we correct for data censorship (“Top-coding”) within the CPS by fitting the upper tail of the income distribution and imputing the hidden observations; this represents an extension to previous studies that instead truncate the top several percentiles of income data. Our findings suggest that changes in the returns to education played an important role in driving the observed rise in inequality.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhaochen He & Yixiao Jiang, 2023. "Decomposing income inequality in the United States: 1968–2018," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 65(6), pages 2751-2778, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:empeco:v:65:y:2023:i:6:d:10.1007_s00181-023-02434-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s00181-023-02434-6
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00181-023-02434-6
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s00181-023-02434-6?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Inequality; Decomposition; CPS;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:empeco:v:65:y:2023:i:6:d:10.1007_s00181-023-02434-6. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.